India is one of the countries that has toll collection as one of the biggest revenues for the government. They maintain the roads and improve the quality of the roads with the tolls collected through the toll booths. The cost differs from one place to another. Some roads are very good for drivers and some roads are not so great but are constantly being improved by the government.
Until a few years back toll collection was done through cash payment and only a few places had a facility to pay online. Later digital payments for toll collection were introduced and the fast tag was made mandatory for all vehicles. Only a few government vehicles and small vehicles were made an exception for it. There are no toll booths right now that are collecting cash only regularly. I would say this is a great innovation for India and a great way to move towards digitalization.
Digital toll collection
Currently, the method of collecting tolls using digital payments is great. We have a fast tag wallet tagged with our vehicle and we have to recharge that wallet before our travel. When we cross the toll booth and wait for a few seconds near the sensor, the toll would be automatically deducted from the fast tag wallet. Later if we want a summary of the toll collected so far, we can take a report from the mobile application. This is how the current toll collection system works.
GPS based toll collection
This is going to be the next innovative way to collect tolls from users. Currently, even though the fast tag is one of the fastest methods to collect tolls, there can be some congestion because the collection is still manual with the help of sensors or what they call RFID. With GPS-based toll collection, the vehicle will be automatically tracked based on the positioning of the vehicle and when they travel in a toll roll, they have to pay the toll only for the distance they had covered. This way it can also be a cost-effective solution for some people and a seamless experience for others as they don't have to wait in a long queue at the toll gate. This system comes with several other advantages as well.
Using blockchain technology in toll collection
Some countries have already adopted modern technologies like Blockchain for some of their activities. Toll collection and voting systems are the biggest use cases for blockchain. A coin can be created for toll collection and an economy can also be created around that coin with the help of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. People who would like to invest in our roadways can invest by purchasing the coins. Others can use the coin to purchase and make payments. The transactions will also be fully tracked so that everything stays permanently on the blockchain. This can be a public node and someone from the general public can run a node and get an incentive for running the node. All these things can be programmed as smart contracts and people who get incentives for running a node can reuse it when they travel on those roads. This way this entire system can be made decentralized and the government need not maintain servers for the same.
I read this news long back in 2020 that one of the commercial banks in South Korea has partnered with the government to create a blockchain toll collection system.
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